Do this in remembrance of me

Is there a more concrete manifestation of God’s grace than food?

Food nourishes us. Without it we die. Within it reside the elements of the earth, of which we are composed and with which we are daily renewed. Food revolutionizes us through an internal, hourly insurrection of the new overthrowing the old.

Food demonstrates the intimacy of grace and work: it grows as a gift freely and abundantly the world over, yet requires effort to cultivate, process, prepare and store. Through it we have access to become not merely grateful recipients, but faithful stewards of life.

Through food we are conscripted as co-conspirators with the impossible political agenda of the universe: the cause of life over death, daily struggling to resist the entropy of the flesh until, one day, for each of us, death seemingly triumphs – only to become, in the end, food for new life.

Food represents the time-fullness of grace. Often it comes just when needed. And when it does come, food must be consumed soon or risk rotting on the shelf – no longer good for today. Content to teach us patience for tomorrow’s timely gift.

Through food we affirm that life burns more than merely fuel, but runs upon the joy of beauty and flavor as well. We skewer and sauté, dice and drizzle and gift our confections one to another for family, friends, holidays, or simple lunchtime rituals.

At it’s best, food transforms to become the consumable love of others. When we serve a meal, we serve our hearts. With it we accept, affirm, celebrate, please, delight, enjoin, and seal ourselves to one another. (At its worst, food becomes the empty and dangerous substitute of love unrequited or forsaken.)

In all these ways, and more, food feeds not only our bellies, but our hearts and minds too. More than any other single thing, it is with food that God enables the suckling of humanity’s soul.

And yet, even with an abundance of resources, one in five American families with children don’t get enough to eat. This erodes the health, creativity, dignity, and joy of millions of people in the U.S. alone and demonstrates a systemic denial of their basic human right to participate in the gift of food. Worldwide, food insecurity is nothing short of a major crisis, especially, right now, in places like Somalia

This is why ancient Jewish and Christian teachings concerning the just practice of economics draws centrally upon a story about a miracle involving food (Exodus 16 and 2 Corinthians 8). This is why the most politically subversive acts of Jesus involved sharing a meal with others (Matthew 9, Mark 2, Luke 5, etc). This is why Jesus’ very presence is symbolized by a dinner party where everyone gets plenty to eat (1 Corinthians 11) – and not, I might add, by a musical concert. And this is why Jesus’ litmus test for righteousness was not a measure of religious adherence, nor doctrinal purity, nor personal piety, but rather by the simple yet self-giving act of providing relief to the hungry and thirsty, the naked and alone (Matthew 25).

So do something about it.

If you know people who have less, invite them for lunch or dinner – often. If you don’t know people who have less, find them. Get to know them. Have a dinner party, with bread and wine. Treat them as equals, because that’s what they are.

Find a food pantry or food bank nearby and help out. Organize a food drive at work, at school, or in your neighborhood. (If you need it, I can give you step-by-step instructions). Consider giving to UNICEF’s relief fund for the famine in Somalia.

If you happen to be in North County San Diego, Interfaith runs two food pantries – one in Oceanside and one in Escondido – where last year alone we provided 480,000 meals. And we are in desperate need of donations because the need continues to increase.

Where there are hungry people, there is no gospel without food.

Technorati Tags: Food, Food insecurity, food pantries, Grace, nutrition, social gospel

Book Review: Unprotected Texts, The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire

Jennifer Wright Knust is bound to be stoned in the courtyard of conservative Christian public opinion this year, thanks, at least in part, to the bang-up job someone is doing on her PR team.

I mean that with all sincerity and admiration.

Newsweek’s Religion Editor, Lisa Miller, picked up on Jennifer’s recent book, Unprotected Texts, The Bible’ Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire and parlayed it into an article, titled, “What the Bible Really Says About Sex.”

Sensing God needed someone to defend the bearded old man’s sexual honor, Al Mohler drew his pistol with “What the Bible Really Says About Sex…Really?” Sadly, yet predictably, Mohler’s argument can be boiled down to “Librals are stoopid.”

Though clearly biased, Jennifer Wright Knust is anything but stupid. More importantly, she never condescends to the personal attacks so prevalent among theological populists like Mohler. In Unprotected Texts she provides an accessible survey of the complexities of sexuality, family, gender roles, and the sexually charged political power struggles found in Jewish and Christian scriptures. Her writing is crisp and energetic, instructional and engaging, and even, at times, personally touching in a way that scholars often attempt, yet rarely accomplish.

It’s a good thing too, because if you lean towards a conservative hermeneutic, Knust is likely to ruffle your feathers. She attempts to dismantle virtually every pillar of conservative family-values, including the ideal of the nuclear family (a modern myth), the exclusivity of male-female marital sex (the exception, not the rule), the high value for marriage (Jesus and Paul barely tolerate marriage), male and female roles (the bible contradicts itself depending on the cultural milieu), and the sinfulness of homosexuality (it’s complicated).

In fact, that pretty much sums up Knust’s arguments about the Bible and sexuality: it’s complicated:

The Bible does not offer a systematic set of teachings or a single sexual code, but it does reveal sometimes conflicting attempts on the part of people and groups to define sexual morality, and to do so in the name of God (p17).

Mohler is right about one thing: these arguments are nothing new, and proclaiming so is where Lisa Miller, in particular, stumbles in her Newsweek article. Still, while this perspective of scripture as a complicated and conflicted dialectic may be old news to scholars, it is still frighteningly rare among everyday folks.

Frightening, I say, because a divergent hermeneutic – where the bible is acknowledged to be a variety of irresolvable divergences – is almost certainly correct. One simply cannot take scripture seriously (as Knust puts it) and fail to notice that it often argues vigorously with itself. Historically, it’s the attempt to force scripture into a seamless and systematic convergence of unquestionable control that leads people to malign and maim others in the name of God.

As I’ve argued before, being intellectually honest enough to live in the tension of irresolvable divergence is an important means of reflecting genuine Christian humility, or, what Leslie Newbigin called a “proper confidence.”

That doesn’t mean I’m with Knust on everything in this book. Her bias leaves little room for a nuanced interaction with opposing views and the overall effect is that certain speculations appear to be well-grounded facts when, in fact, they’re little more than modern academic fancy (i.e. the assertion David and Jonathan’s relationship was sexual).

Moreover, internal conflict in scripture doesn’t necessarily preclude congruence. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine having a proper confidence in Christ, much less Christianity, without a sense of congruence within certain themes. Yet, Knust offers almost nothing to identify the internal congruences of scripture (except the congruence of conflict). She seems content to commend the golden rule as the highest expression of scripture without explaining exactly why this ethic warrants preservation in the midst of so much textual excising.

Still, Knust’s book represents an important perspective in a world that seems to be increasingly prone to religious extremism in the form of sexism, misogyny, and violence. There are practical, real-life implications at stake: people still get literally and figuratively stoned in this world for speaking or acting in ways contrary to entrenched social and religious mores.

As Knust herself says in the introduction: “sluts should live” (p17).

(I received a galley copy of Unprotected Texts free of charge by the publisher in return for agreeing to review the book. I was not asked to offer either a positive or negative review.)

Technorati Tags: Al Mohler, Gender Roles, Jennifer Wright Knust, Scripture, Sex, Sexuality, Unprotected Texts

The Lord’s Prayer as Political Manifesto

“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.’

Matthew 6:9-13

Recently a friend posted this question on facebook:

What does it look like when the Kingdom comes “on earth as it is in heaven”?

This is a question Christians often find difficult to answer. In the tradition I hail from (Charismatic/Pentecostal), it usually sends us into speculative reveries about “heaven”, or worse, about bringing the “power” of God into our lives to combat the devil.

But – typical of ancient Jewish rhetorical forms – the question inherently posed is answered by the prayer itself: The “kingdom” (or God’s will) will come “on earth as it is in heaven”:

• When there is daily bread for everyone (v11),
• When the practice of forgiveness routinely breaks the cycle of retribution (v12), and
• When people faithfully do what is right because evil no longer makes sense (v13).

Very simply, Jesus’ prayer evokes a life of goodness for all. Set within the context of a prayer, Jesus names goodness and shows that it springs from an overall posture of reliance upon God.

It helps to know that, like much of what Jesus said, his prayer is an echo of the great eschatological passages in Isaiah like 2:1-5 and 65:17-25. The future hope Jewish prophets spoke of was a redeemed earth, finally free of the evil caused by foolishness and vanity. Look at how Isaiah describes this great end-times hope in Chapter 65:

20 “Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
²¹ They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
²² No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
²³ They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
they and their descendants with them.
²⁴ Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
²⁵ The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the LORD.

What’s being depicted here is a good life on earth, involving the joy of birth, the blessing of a long life, the dignity of work, the pleasure of eating, and the love of family and community. We see true peace, in the Jewish sense of shalom; completeness.

Now, it is patently obvious to me that these passages (both in Matthew and Isaiah) are about down-to-earth problems and down-to-earth solutions; not earth-bound problems we escape by flying away to an ethereal plane of existence, or “spiritual” problems combatted by the genuflections of a voodoo Christianity. Yet that is often what Christians have in mind when they speak of “heaven” and “the kingdom” and it tends to imprison us in abstract conversations and ridiculous theatrics.

Meanwhile, a couple thousand years later, the earth is still groaning for this good future to become a present reality.

It’s time to grow up. As long as the religious concept of evil remains limited to the personification of a mythical creature and our ability to imagine better possibilities remains limited to a mythical place, we will be forever relegated to the individualized realm of dualistic pietism.

We must follow Christ and the prophets in moving beyond our childish metaphors and concretely name evil for what it really is – starvation, exploitation, exclusion, vengeance, violence, and the like – so we can name goodness for what it really is: equality, provision, peace, and so forth.

Moving toward the reality of such things is extremely difficult, but not impossible. Not only is there is no theological impediment to God’s will being done “on earth as it is in heaven”, it is, in fact, our theological imperative to cooperate with this effort, inaugurated by Christ in earnest over 2000 years ago. It will not happen except through us.

That is what the Lord’s prayer is really about. We don’t pray so God will do something for us, we pray so God will do something to us. We don’t pray to pass responsibility on to an invisible other, we pray for the stuff that will get us off our knees and cause us to roll up our sleeves.

The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer to end all prayers because in it, Jesus not only teaches his disciples how to pray, but how to stop praying.

The Lord’s Prayer is not a protective charm. It’s not about magic, voodoo, or “spiritual mapping.” It’s about naming the concrete goodness of God, discovering a gift of faith for that goodness, and then bringing that goodness into reality by the sheer political will that such a gift empowers.

Technorati Tags: Isaiah, Jesus, Matthew, The Lord's Prayer

Men Are In Charge Because the Bible Says So

There’s alot of sexual tension in the Church and I’m not just talking about the youth group.

One obvious aspect of gender tension in the Church is the prejudice toward men in roles of authority. I was raised in a church grounded in a fundamentalist-leaning hermeneutic. Hence, high levels of leadership – pastoral position, adult teaching positions, eldership, board members – were reserved for men. This mantle of authority trickled down the hierarchical ladder to the family as well. Men were taught to be the “spiritual leaders” of their households and women were taught to be generally supportive and submissive. In my experience this is usually perceived to mean that, ideally, the man should be the initiator and director of the spiritual activities of the home and that all family business decisions are ultimately made by the husband. (Neither of these ideas has any grounding in biblical teaching or actual reality.)

In Pentecostal churches I observed more flexibility – women commonly operated in “prophetic” roles, and, less commonly in preaching roles, but typically were still instructed to defer to their husbands in matters of governance in church and the home. Even in mainline churches where women have been ordained for many years I’ve observed a kind of “lame duck” status for a woman pastors. One woman I know pastors a Methodist church in Ohio and her congregation largely ignores her attempts to lead. While it’s extremely difficult to separate her frustration from other factors – such as the culture of Methodist churches, the personality of that particular church, and the tendency of older congregations to resist change – she herself suspects her difficulties are due partly to gender bias.

One last example: My wife is on staff at a Jewish retirement community where the rabbi is a woman and she has observed similar tensions.

Let’s face it: the single greatest obstacle to gender barriers between men and women in churches is the Bible. Ancient scripture clearly reflects a traditional patriarchal culture – and by “patriarchy” I mean male dominance by excluding women from the seats of power through various means of force (shame, restriction from education, exclusion from property ownership, restriction from representation, and, of course, violence). Moreover, while biblical attitudes toward women may be relatively liberating (compared to the beliefs of their day), compared to Modern social mores they are clearly archaic. It does not help to pretend this isn’t so.

I think a difficult yet important question for Postmodern Christians is this: Is everything affirmed in the bible universally transcendent, or is scripture (like its authors) to some extent captive to the context in which it was formed? I’m convinced of the latter.

What are some of the gender tensions you’ve noticed in churches? How does the Bible help or hurt in these situations? How do you decide which attitudes and postures affirmed in scripture are universal and culturally transcendent, and how do you decide which are culturally-bound?

Technorati Tags: Authority, Gender, Scripture, Sexuality, The Bible

Chad Estes on the Flotilla Debacle in Middle East

I’m not sure if my friend Chad realizes what he’s getting himself into, but in the wake of the flotilla debacle – and after clearly indicting everyone involved – he’s openly taking American Christians to task for blindly supporting Israel in all things:

But my ire today isn’t limited to this current humanitarian/political nightmare. What is really disappointing to me is the automatic support that many Christians give towards ANY actions that Israel takes. Do they equate Israel’s actions to God’s sanctioned will? If so, I’m thinking that is based on some really shoddy Bible study.

It’s important to understand that Chad isn’t saying Israel was ultimately wrong in this case. You might agree with Chad’s overall point and still support Israel’s actions in this case. Take a minute to read Chad’s whole post and comment there.

Technorati Tags: Bible, Chad Estes, Gaza, Hamas, Israel

The Community of Suffering Mercy

³Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, ⁴who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. ⁵For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. ⁶If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. ⁷And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

~ 2 Corinthians 1:3-7

As if pain and suffering weren’t bad enough, one of the common features of suffering is that those who are afflicted tend to feel terribly alone in their distress. We often contribute to that isolation by distancing ourselves – either physically or emotionally – from suffering people because we just don’t know what do say or do. We want to solve problems, not just acknowledge them, and when we don’t know how to solve the problem we sometimes make the mistake of not acknowledging it at all.

The Christians in Corinth are going through a particularly difficult time and Paul wants them to know they are not alone, so he charges right out of the gate in this letter with a praise for the “Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.” Paul wants these believers to know, first of all, that they do not suffer without relief, for our God is the God “who comforts us in all our troubles.”

But notice, Paul says here that at times comfort from God comes not in the form of a solution, but in the form of empathy and understanding from others who have suffered! Paul says

“[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (v4).

Paul then uses a powerful image to drive home his point: Picture a large kettle filling up from a rapidly flowing tap, the liquid racing to the brim and them gushing over the edge, splashing down the sides and running out onto the floor.

This is the suffering of Christ.

As the people who place our trust in the faithfulness of Christ, his suffering inevitably spills out onto us. Yet, this overflow is also the comfort of Christ, and as he comforts others we too are bathed in that merciful flow.

Paul’s evocative image illustrates a surprising and distinctively Christian truth that we can receive comfort and empathy from God for our sufferings because we serve a God who has himself suffered. Christ meets us in our pain and misery – not from a sympathetic distance, but shoulder-to-shoulder in the muck and mire of our broken humanity. He has been there as a broken human, and he offers us mercy from the wellspring of his empowering grace.

When we have received this mercy  – sometimes in prayer, sometimes in scripture, but mostly in community – we respond by sharing it to others around us. That is the community of mercy in action. The gift of grace must be moved or else rot and spoil like lay-old manna. We are common sufferers, and common comforters, in Christ and with Christ, and by this activity we begin to enjoy a kind of equality that is peculiarly meant for the people of the Kingdom of God (2 Co 8:13-15).

Technorati Tags: Comfort, community, Corinthians, Devotions, Paul, Suffering

Galatians Series at Ikon Community Starts Today

This week at Ikon we began a series on Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians. We kicked it off last night with a gathering centered around one of the major themes of the letter, and today I started the daily reading with an introduction of why I think this should be an important series for our little group.

As usual, any of you are welcome to join us!

Technorati Tags: Galatians, Gospel, Ikon Community, Paul

The Tale of Two Gardeners, An Easter Parable

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. ~ John 12:24

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ~ John 6:53

Once there were two men who longed for real tomatoes with good flavor – unlike the bland, waxy variety found in the chain supermarkets. So they both decided to start their own home gardens.

The first gardener bought the best seeds in the best seed catalog and picked out a nice patch of dirt behind his house with good sunlight. Since tomatoes are the gateway drug of home gardening, he couldn’t help but purchase a few pepper plants and eggplants too. He dug in the hard soil (there was a lot of clay in their area) and planted and watered his seeds, careful to space them apart properly, and reflecting on how – in a sense – the seed had to die before new life could spring from it.

Every day he was diligent to water and weed his garden and, sure enough, in about a week little sprouts poked through the surface. But neither the tomatoes nor the others plants grew as big as those in the catalog pictures, and although his tomatoes tasted far better than the waxy supermarket variety, they looked a bit scrawny and didn’t produce very much.

The second gardener bought the best seeds in the best seed catalog and picked out a nice patch of dirt behind his house with good sunlight. Since tomatoes are the gateway drug of home gardening, he couldn’t help but purchase a few pepper plants and eggplants too.

Because there was a lot of clay in their area he rented a roto-tiller and spent a day plowing up the hard dirt for his garden bed. The tiller violently ripped into the hard soil about a foot deep, churning everything over and deeply cultivating the topsoil and clay into a soft new mixture. Then he went to the local compost facility where grass clippings, pulled weeds, and other yard waste from all over the city was allowed to rot and decay into smelly black piles of rich organic matter. He filled his truck bed to the brim with this living-dead dirt and shoveled it onto his freshly-tilled planter beds. To this he added earthworm castings (worm poop!). He then folded all this deep into the soil turning it over and over again one shovel-full at a time.

Then he added organic fertilizer, made from decomposed bone, kelp, and fish meal. He sprinkled the ashy white powder all over the planter beds and raked it into the dirt, shaping the beds into gently sloping mounds, which were now smelly, soft, and a deep dark brown color. Into this graveyard of decomposed animal and vegetable waste he planted and watered his seeds, and reflected on how they would have to break open and “die” in order for life to spring from them. And he thought, too, of how the young plants would be – in a sense – eating the flesh and drinking the blood of all the animals and plants that were sacrificed and given on their behalf, and he marveled at how much death was required to produce rich, full life.

That summer his tomatoes outgrew their cages, and the pepper plants were so full they crowded each other in the beds. He picked so many big, beautiful tomatoes and peppers that he had to share them with his friends and neighbors since it was more than he could possible eat all by himself. And his tomatoes were very tasty.

Technorati Tags: Easter, Gardening, Jesus Christ, John, Parables

Holy Week, Day 6

Today is our final reading before Easter, and much like yesterday’s chapter, today’s is packed with action as Jesus approaches the climactic moment of his earthly ministry. Take time to read through Matthew 27 today and reflect on the questions below:

Questions for Reflection:

1. What scene or character in this chapter do you most identify with? Why?
2. Imagine you were one of Jesus’ disciples, and expected him to be the anointed one who finally overthrew the Roman oppressors and vindicated you and your people. How would this series of events impact you? How might you have made sense of it all?
3. There is a tension that runs throughout Jesus’ ministry between him and his followers: they want him to conquer with power but he typically serves and sacrifices instead – including giving the ultimate sacrifice. That is, Christ’s strength always looked like weakness. How does this tension continue today between Christ and his followers?

Technorati Tags: Easter, Holy Week, Ikon Community, Jesus, Matthew

Holy Week, Day Four

Today’s reading is a little longer, and introduces us to Jesus’ teachings about the end of the age – a subject we don’t often hear about during the Easter season, but one that is obviously tied to his resurrection. So, read Matthew Chapter 24 and 25 and reflect on the questions below.

Questions for Reflection

1. How would you sum up Chapter 24? What is the main thing Jesus seems to be trying to say?
2. How would you sum up the teaching of the three parables in Chapter 25?
3. Why do you think Jesus might be discussing this during the week leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection?
4. How do you think this subject of the end of the age might be relevant for us today?

Technorati Tags: Easter, Eschatology, Holy Week, Jesus, Matthew, Parables